Clean Up
by Muzzled
Summary: A small-time gangster called Leo doesn't believe in The Batman. A short story I wrote, a spur of the moment sort of thing. Rating and reviews much appreciated.


**Clean Up**

There are sounds that surround him, enveloping him in the buzz of Gotham's resonating sounds. The taxi driver's cursing, the police officer's beating and the prostitute's moaning. In cleaner places like Metropolis or Keystone City, these sounds might alarm people, but these are run of the mil for Gotham City. More often than not, if you're not hearing people shouting and gunshots in the distance, then there's something wrong in Gotham City.

This guy, he's about five-foot-five, decked out in the cheapest clothes he could find from his wardrobe. He normally wouldn't be caught dead in them, not even to work out at the gym, but tonight's a messy night, as can be told by the blood and sweat that have stained his outfit. He wears an old grey fedora that's been bent out of shape over the years. His face is covered with stubble so thick that it almost acts as a mask. Masks aren't really needed in Gotham City though. Not for crooks like this guy. You see, most of Gotham City is already made up of drug dealers, murderers, rapists and gangsters. You have nothing to hide from there. If you have a dirty little secret that you'd kill to keep, then you can bet every bit of dirty money in your wallet that the clown next to you has an even dirtier little secret. Gotham City is the only place where the bad guys aren't afraid to show their faces -- it's the good guys that have to hide theirs.

This guy now, covered in his bloody and dirty clothes, he's standing in a backstreet in Crime Alley, the dirtiest slum in all of Gotham. In front of him is an idling statesmen parked in neutral, the boot of the car popped open. His job tonight is strictly one thing: clean up.

His name's Leo. He's a cleaner. Not the typical janitor that mops up your vomit or the maid that scrubs the hairs out of your bathroom sink, no, he's a special high paid kind of cleaner. A big important guy like Sal Maroni, Carmine Falcone or Carl Grissom calls up Leo, tells him there's a few stiffs laying in an alley in The Narrows, he's there in ten minutes. He and the bodies are gone in eleven minutes.

Leo's an expert on "cleaning." He knows all the best places for dumping bodies in Gotham City, the places where cops don't go, where people don't look. He knows how to make things look like accidents. He's even been called in to do a few frame ups on some overzealous cops.

Leo makes quite a living for himself off of mob killings. He likes to think that Gotham City's Commissioner of Police, Jim Gordon, would have put all of the mob bosses behind bars now if it weren't for Leo's talent with cleaning up evidence. He never leaves any traces behind. No blood, no finger prints, no bullets, no bodies. Nothing. He's the best there is in Gotham. He makes two thousand dollars per body he disposes of. And with the crime rate as high as it is, Leo's making a killing.

And here he is, hauling three dead bodies off the ground and into the boot of his car. He acts fast, but he doesn't panic. He never panics. Not even when he hears police sirens, he doesn't panic. But he gets nervous though. To calm his nerves, he thinks of how desperate the people in this city are. How pathetic they are.

He thinks of how Gotham is a lost cause, it's been that way since Thomas and Martha Wayne were murdered all those years ago. Anyone do-gooders should have left for Metropolis long ago. But they don't. They stay in Gotham City. And you know what they do? They make up stories. Little tales to whisper to their friends of a monster in the darkness. Something in the shadows that's been picking off all the criminals and bad people in this city's underworld. The Batman is what they've taken to calling it. Really cute. They realise the police will never do anything, that Gordon is as incompetent as police commissioners get, so they imagine up some kind of boogey man to help them sleep slightly better at night.

No, Leo doesn't believe these tales. He lives in the real world. Reality. The reality where eighty percent of the GCPD is corrupt. The reality where no mayor or politician has any control over Gotham, control is totally in the hand of the mob. The reality where prostitution, drugs and human trafficking are the most profitable industries in Gotham City. The reality where Thomas and Martha Wayne were shot dead in cold blood and the killer was never caught. The reality where Leo is standing covered in blood in Crime Alley, hauling the last of the three bodies into the boot of his car, so he can take them down to the abandoned docks, attach some weights to these corpses and throw them to the bottom of the harbour, never to be seen again. That's what Gotham's reality is, and that's the reality that Leo lives in. People die and other people, like him, profit from it. Leo does not believe in The Batman.

This guy, Leo, he shuts his boot. Looks around and sees no more traces of evidence on the ground. All the blood is on his shirt and in his boot, along with the corpses. He lets out a sigh and gets into the drivers seat of his statesmen, ready to take these corpses for a swim and then collect his six thousand dollar clean up wage. His car shakes and wheezes in the cold Gotham air as he starts driving out of the alley. He checks his rear vision mirror and sees a large black figure in his backseat, its eyes filled with rage, vengeance and hate.

Leo is living in a new reality now.


End file.
